Tag Archives: action comics

Fun fact: the world’s first telephone booth, or “Fernsprechkiosk,” was opened on January 12, 1881, in Berlin. This was followed the next day by the world’s first weirdo using it to change his clothes. Believe it… or don’t.

In case you were wondering… no, it wouldn’t have been weird for Clark Kent to use a phone booth for wardrobe purposes, at least early in his career. In those days, phone booths usually had glass windows only on the door, and those windows were typically frosted for extra privacy. Plus, he’s a reporter — in the days before cellphones, no one would have thought twice about seeing Clark duck into a phone booth in a hurry, since that was part of his job.

The funny thing is Superman himself rarely used a phone booth in the comics. According to The Superman Homepage, Clark Kent first changed to Superman inside a phone booth in The Mechanical Monsters, a Superman cartoon produced by Fleischer Studios and released in 1941. That and a few mentions of phone booths during the Superman radio show was all it took for the public to link Superman and phone booths forever.

Of course, he’s not the only comic character to make use of a phone booth. For instance…